Anarchy, Authority, Rule

International Relations and Political Science are constituted as disciplines on the Hobbesian opposition of anarchy and authority. We reject this opposition and the paradigms of anarchy and authority it has come to authorize. We propose instead a single paradigm of rule to account for the pervasive asymmetries of international relations. We show that in German social thought from Hegel to Weber political society consists in relations of super- and subordination—relations maintained through rules and obtaining in rule. We reformulate Weber's three ideal types of rule, show their relation to independently established types of rule, and apply them to political society generally. We then examine diverse efforts in the recent literature of International Relations to challenge the assumption of anarchy, using the paradigm of rule to clear up numerous terminological and conceptual confusions. Finally, we show how the paradigm of rule facilitates an understanding of such contemporary asymmetries as Soviet-East European and North-South relations.